Impact & lessons learned from my successful 1st PH launch.

The past 3 days have been a whirlwind after launching on Product Hunt.

I read a bunch of guides leading up to this and (probably) spent too much time prepping. I found posts super helpful though - so I want to share back my own experience in case it helps anyone else.

There's plenty out there about the basics (e.g., post at 12:01am PT, etc.) so I won't talk about that. Instead I'll cover a few topics on my own unique experience:

• Impact (upvotes, sign ups, etc.)
• Context
• Tips / what worked well
• Learnings / what I wish I had done
• My offer to help out with your launch

IMPACT

Disclaimer: I'm a 1st time founder and this was my first ever PH launch. I didn't have high expectations and to me it was a big success!

• 250+ upvotes
• 7 5-star reviews
• 54+ comments
• Ranked #8 for the day
• Featured in the PH newsletter
• 650+ site traffic
• 150+ new sign-ups (across paid subs, free trial, and free) !!
• 3 new partners

CONTEXT

The product:

Blossom.team: Modern professional coaching, backed by science.
Blossom makes coaching more accessible than ever before.
Find the perfect coach based on your profile & goals, and track your progress along the way with our science-backed app. Start your growth journey with confidence and Blossom into your best self today!

What your product is matters a lot. Not everything is relevant to the PH community. Coaching & professional development is gaining more attention in founder and techie circles, but it's largely more accepted by corporate professionals and execs.

The majority of our current users and partners didn't have PH accounts, so that hurt us a bit since you can get a big push from your own audience.

Tips / what worked well

1/ Prep: ask for feedback early. Make a draft PH post on PreviewHunt and share it with a lot of people! Not just close friends -- I asked for feedback from a bunch of authors of PH launch guides. Many people didn't respond, but a lot of people did! The ideal person you should ask for feedback is both a part of your target persona + representative of the PH user community.

2/ Build genuine relationships well before your PH launch, with no agenda. When I started my startup journey, I met a bunch of early stage founders and creators. A year later, a few of them are doing well and are in a position to help.
1 tactical tip: if you stumble across something you find cool or valuable -- tell the makers! Everyone loves feedback - especially if it's genuine and NOT tied to something you want from them. That last part is really important. Get in the habit of reaching out to folks with no agenda in mind to share authentic feedback, and maybe someday down the road you'll be able to support them or they'll be able to support you.

3/ Block off the day and reach out to anyone you've ever met. Text / email folks and ask them to celebrate your launch with you! If they reply, ask them to share with anyone else who might be interested.

4/ Give supporters something to retweet. Make it easier for your supporters to spread the word. I made a couple of simple pics in figma to celebrate milestones (example HERE). Tag people that have been supportive and engaged in the pic - they're likely to share it.

5/ Don't be shy: I DM'd a few strangers on Twitter telling them about my product and the launch. I asked for their support if they believed in the product. A couple of them replied and tweeted it out to their 20K+ followers! As someone who had 4 twitter followers before my PH launch (more on that later) this was huge.

6/ Stay organized! I had a spreadsheet of 50+ people to ping. I had a column for timezone so I could start with folks at 12:01am PT who'd be awake. I had a column with hyperlinks to relevant communication medium. I had a separate tab for communities / groups. It might seem like overkill but I was really grateful the day of - things got super chaotic!

7/ Write an authentic maker comment, and record a demo. This is somewhat basic / well-covered by other guides but really important so worth highlighting.

Learnings / what I wish I had done

Disclaimer: all opinions are my own. Tell me if you disagree!

1/ I wish I got a Hunter to hunt my product. I tried, but it was hard. I had a few folks agree to it, and then they got a bit busy on the launch date so I had to reschedule it. Ultimately the logistics were too complicated and we decided to just launch without a hunter. In retrospect, I think it might've made a difference. The widespread advice I've been seeing lately is not to worry about getting a big hunter, but I can't help but think we might've done even better had we had a top hunter!

2/ I wish I spent more effort building up non-spammy PH launch networks. Any guide you will read will tell you to join 3 million facebook groups, discord, slack, telegram, signal, etc. etc. channels. These groups are pretty unhelpful since it's just an endless spam-fest. We might've gotten 2 upvotes from here despite spending like 1-2 hours reaching out.
Instead, I would focus on building relationships in your real communities. HUGE shout-out to all of the support & love from @charlierward + @talktostefan + weekendclub friends and @Lucypink7 + @eivindhaa the PH pod amigos! Y'all are amazing.

3/ I wish I spent more time building up my more of an audience / following with friends via Twitter and PH itself. I joined Twitter in late 2020 and on launch day I only had like 4 followers. I had a decently healthy group of folks to reach out to but it would've been great to have a twitter I could leverage rather than a bunch of scattered emails and texts. Similar story on PH following.

My offer to help out with your launch

Based on my experience, the thing that would've been easiest AND most impactful in helping prep would've been growing my support "network" over time.

I wish every single author of a "PH launch guide" had also included their PH / Twitter accounts so we could've followed each other. Then, on launch day, instead of spamming, there'd be organic notifications shared and support would've been nice and easy.

So, with that being said, I offer the following:

• Follow me on Twitter and I'll follow you back
• DM when you launch so I can support in case I don't see the tweet
• Follow me on Product Hunt so I get an email notification when you launch and can support :)
• If you're planning on launching on PH in the next few months, drop your twitter and PH links in the comments below so we can ALL follow each other and support on our future launch days!

Cheers!
-AJ